This past week the cohort read the article Reflections on a Movement: #transformDH, Growing Up . The article made me think about how my own project can be transformative and our program’s place in #transformDH.
My project this year is not incredibly innovative or transformative. It uses Oral Histories to shed light on changing experiences at the college in the early twentieth century. Therefore, questions central to Transformative DH like race, gender, sexuality, and disability are not all present in the tapes. Women’s experiences as coeds are discussed, but there are only a total of 6 women out of 20 narrators.
This project can, however, focus in on these differences. It can look into how we have changed since the decades these tapes are concerned with, and ask where we still need to go. I plan to dedicate a good amount of the project to women on campus, as Gettysburg College was not officially a coed school in the 1920s and early 1930s. Their experiences are unique and provide insight into the changing role of women on campus. While this particular project is not incredibly transformative, it is not restrictive either. I want to use it in a transformative way as best I can.
Our program itself is transformative in a way. The practices of DH that I have learned over the past year have stressed diversity of thought and the breakdown or restrictive scholarship. Our DH is about openness, we want to engage with the community.
This program is also unique for its fellows. The cohorts have been diverse groups of young women undergraduates who have been given chances to produce great scholarship. While young women are not out of place in a library, we do not exemplify the stereotype of digital experts. Yet this program has encouraged us to become great at what we do and be confident in our work. This program should strive to bring more diverse voices in the future and encourage them to excel in DH.
We should also be open in how we define DH. I have been working with various definitions of DH for the past year. I lean towards a very open definition where almost anything can be defined as DH so long as a good argument is made. Creating a strict definition of DH is reductive and rules out possibilities of future innovation by alienating those who might add something great to this community. That openness is in and of itself transformative. It allows for more voices in discussions of Digital Scholarship, voices of people who are not established but have perspectives that can transform the community. DH must be adaptable and open to new sources if it is to continue its mission.
There is a question raised in the article that particularly struck me in the context of DH on campuses. The authors ask, “Are our institutions embracing us, or are they consuming us in the name of diversity?” To avoid becoming a part of the ivory tower of academia, our DH program should push the boundaries and extend invitations to the community. While DH has places to improve, that should be a call to action to #transformDH.
Great challenge of extending our program to the community. I am not entirely sure what this looks like, but I am intrigued. We do try to involve the campus community by opening up the workshops, and get some non-DSSF people to come, but it’s not that often that it happens.
And don’t underestimate your project! By the themes and voices you choose to highlight, you are bringing different perspectives on the past.